Lost Luggage, or, Home is Where the Trunk Is
by Daisy Pennifold
Summary: In which Harry's luggage arrives home ahead of him, and disrupts his entire world with long suppressed truths.


_A/N: Like so many of my stories, the plot and setting came to me in a dream. It was so beautiful and heartbreakingly sad, I didn't want to wake up. But I did, and changed it 'round just a bit to fit the Harry Potter world. It's deliberately ambiguous. There will never be more than this one-shot. I know it leaves a lot of questions, but I can't answer them. Use your imagination to fill in the gaps. _

His first impression of the cottage was that it resembled nothing more than an overlarge stump.

He hadn't been here in nearly five years, so he could be wrong, but he couldn't remember it looking like this. It had been neat, sparkling, with a perfectly white picket fence surrounding the lawn and prim tulips neatly in beds flanking the door. This house, however…

His trunk was sitting on a cracked stone stoop that joined the house with a front garden that was a riot of color and leaves and blossoms and fireflies. Gnomes were shrieking hysterically as they raced around, trying to catch the beautiful little insects, blinking in the twilight. The path leading from the rounded doorway to the wattle-fence gate was stone, and looked ancient, with moss and tiny flowers growing between the crevices.

The house itself was the size of a two-story cottage, but there the resemblance ended. It was wildly shaped, sort of round, but like a stump, with odd bumps and nooks jutting out everywhere. There were windows in the strangest places, and they were all different shapes, sizes, and colors. The walls appeared to be bark, and the thatch on the roof was some mossy material, hard to distinguish in the twilight. A nearby maple tree appeared to have thrust a couple of large branches right into an upstairs window.

Harry loved it. He just couldn't remember it. He was sure that he'd remember a house like this.

His trunk was on the front stoop, though, so this had to be the place.

Maybe they'd moved, without telling him.

He walked up to the house, ducking a little as he entered through the hobbity door. The cottage was darker on the inside, but to his right he could see two lumps on a sofa. One tiny, one larger. Harry smiled. Someone was waiting for him.

He knelt down by the sofa and looked at the smaller figure first. Her dark curls were plastered to her forehead with sweat, and she was breathing very softly. He thought that he could take her to bed without waking her.

He lifted her up and started up the roughly hewn wooden stairs. The ground floor appeared to be one large room, so he assumed her nursery was upstairs.

"Dad-", she yawned hugely and cuddled closer, "Daddy? You here now?"

"Yes, love, I'm here. I'll put you to bed. I want to talk to your mum."

"Mummy's home."

"I know, darling. I saw her downstairs," Harry replied. He looked down at his daughter, who was so sleepy that she could barely get the words out without yawning.

"No, you didn't."

"Ok, love. Go back to sleep." Harry pushed open the first door on the right, as it had some crayon artwork on the wall beside it. He gasped softly as he took in the room before him.

The moonlight shone full in through one window, illuminating a thousand sparkling balls on the dark walls and ceiling so that it looked as though the room was full of stars. The other window wasdark with tree limbs thrusting through. This was the room he saw from outside, he realized, and he gazed in awe at the beautiful hammock bed dangling quite close to the floor, hanging in-between the limbs. He placed Dorea in the bed, covering her with a blanket that looked as if it were made from woven autumn leaves, but felt like silk. She smiled and snuggled in, saying again, sleepily,

"'night, Daddy. Mummy's home."

"Goodnight, love."

He made his way softly down the stairs, and kneeled next to the sofa again. The room was very dark, now. He couldn't see colors or details, just shapes. He pushed the mass of soft hair covering her face out of the way, and kissed her, softly, where he felt her lips should be. She woke slightly, and returned the kiss.

He didn't remember her kissing like this, either. Not him. This reminded him of…

"You've got the wrong house, Harry," she murmured against his lips.

His eyes opened wide, and he pulled back from the woman on the sofa. She sat up, swinging her legs to the floor, and leaned away from him to light a lamp sitting nearby. He looked at her in silent astonishment.

He had kissed Ginny.

This was Ginny's house.

"Wha-" he wasn't sure that he wanted to know everything yet, so he settled for,

"But Dorea's here! I just put her to bed."

"I know. I watch her constantly. Her mum's always at work. You know how she is. I had an extra room, so I made it into a nursery for Dorea."

"It's lovely. The cottage is lovely. Small though. I'd have thought you'd be married with five kids by now."

"I never married." Not looking at him, she got up and walked across the room to the kitchen area, her bare feet padding softly against the worn, warm wooden floor, and put a saucepan on the range. Filling it with milk, she called over her shoulder,

"Cocoa? Or do you want to be getting over to Hermione? She should be home by now. We knew you were coming today, when the trunk appeared, so she said she'd be home early. Dor' said you'd come here, so she wantedme to wait with her on the sofa. I don't know how that girl knows so much at her age," she said, shaking her head as she finished her nervous prattle.

"Cocoa?" she said again.

"Er, sure, Gin." He walked across the room, now filled with a soft indeterminate glow, and looked at the witch standing near the range.

She wore clingy, flowing, pale green robes. A dryad in her tree. Her hair was still long, and red, and slightly frizzy from sleep, but he didn't know how he'd mistaken her for Hermione, even in the dark.

He'd just assumed... he was home. It felt like home. The trunk was on _her_ doorstep. That was significant.

"Where – uh, where do we live then? The trunk was supposed to go to my home, but I guess I miscalculated. Or maybe it's because Dorea's here."

"She's here more often than not, Hermione works so much. You have that impossibly neat cottage down the lane. Yellow, with a white picket fence. Your floo-calls arrive in her parlor."

That would be it. That was Hermione. How he ever thought that she would live _here_…

"Where's your floo?"

"Over there," she said, pointing to a rounded, crumbly looking fireplace next to the kitchen. The fire in it crackled happily, and he could see pictures of Dorea and Hermione, himself, Ron, and many other Weasleys waving at him from the mantle.

"Does she ever mention him?" he asked, as she handed him a cup, and leaned back against an old table with her own cradled in her hands.

"No. She pretends as though he never existed. It's the one thing we fight about." She smiled ruefully at him, but Harry could see the glimmer of pain in her eyes when she thought about her brother.

"I'm so sorry."

"It's alright. We all miss him."

"No, I mean about-"

"As if you could possibly say in _words_ how you feel about _that_, Harry." Suddenly, Ginny sounded bitter and venomous.

"Go home to your wife. I don't blame either of you. You did what you had to do. She needed you."

"Did- did you?"

"Do I really have to answer that? It doesn't matter anymore." She finished her cocoa in a quick swig and headed upstairs.

"I'm going to bed, Harry. I'll bring Dor' over after breakfast. Let yourself out."

"Ginny?"

"_What_, Harry?"

"The spell I used to banish my trunk – it's a homing spell, but a special one. It sends the item to the place where I love most. And am loved most."

Ginny pivoted on the stair to look at him. She opened her mouth, shut it again, glared at him. There were tears in her eyes.

"Like you said, it's because Dorea's here. Go home, Harry."

He watched her walk up the steps, heard her door open and shut.

"I am home, Gin."

_A/N: I realize this doesn't have the best form. I wanted to preserve as much of my dream as I could, so I described the house more than is really necessary for a story this short. I hope you like it anyway... it really was a lovely dream._


End file.
